Leamouth
| Leamouth | |
| Middlesex | |
|---|---|
 Container City 2, Leamouth | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ394807 |
| Location: | 51°30’39"N, 0°0’23"E |
| Data | |
| Post town: | London |
| Postcode: | E14 |
| Dialling code: | 020 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Tower Hamlets |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Poplar and Limehouse |
Leamouth is an urban town in Middlesex, standing on the west side of the mouth of the River Lea near where it falls into the River Thames. This is the easternmost point in Middlesex.
The northern part of the area lies within a meander of the Lea; the southern part is bounded in the west by the former East India Docks, on two sides by the Lea and by the River Thames to the south. Forming two 'tongues' of land, sometimes mistakenly identified as a peninsula; the western known as Goodluck Hope and the eastern tongue as Orchard Place.
The name Orchard Place derives from a manor house on the spit; this site had become an eponymous public house from 1800–60. When the docks were constructed, the area became isolated, with the only access via the dock road, from Poplar. Residents were engaged at the glass works, the iron and engineering works, or the Samuda Brothers, Orchard House Yard and Thames Iron Works ship yards. When the Thames Plate Glass Works closed in 1874, many of the hands – who had migrated to the area from Tyneside and St Helens, Lancashire in the 1840s – now followed the glassworks to America. To house the workers, there were about 100 small two-storied cottages – built from the 1820s and condemned in 1935.[1] There was the Bow Creek school (founded in 1865), but few shops, and the Crown, a public house, opened about 1840.[2]
One street, Orchard Place, runs through the former industrial area and the Lower Lea Crossing crosses the narrow strip of land between the two tongues. The northern part was principally occupied by Pura Foods Ltd vegetable oil refinery – on the site of the former Thames Plate Glass Works; and the south by engineering works, shipyards (Thames Iron Works and Orchard House Yard) and Trinity Buoy Wharf which contains London's only lighthouse. There are also live-work units, many in the form of the Container Cities. The "Jubilee" pedestrian bridge across the Lea links the area to the east bank of the Lea, and Canning Town station.
The Leamouth Peninsula project is a scheme by architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill that has received planning permission to create up to 1837 homes, a community centre, an arts centre, and a primary school with places for up to 371 children on the peninsula. The 1,900,000 square foot scheme will consist of extremely high density housing around a central core pedestrian route linking to the proposed lower Lea Valley linear Park - leading to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. There will be a mixture of towers, from 144 feet to 279 feet in height.[3] The scheme will be implemented in two phases, one north of the single access road to the site, the other to the south, around Trinity Buoy Wharf. Construction work began, but was suspended in early 2009 due to the downturn in the housing market.
Outside links
- Leamouth Road and Orchard Place: Historical development - Survey of London: volumes 43 and 44: Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs (1994), pp. 646-655
- A pedestrian and cycle bridge connecting Leamouth to Canning Town tube station, opened in 2006.
References
- ↑ The cottages typically consisted of four rooms and a wash-house.
- ↑ Charles Lammin Memories of Orchard House (East London History Society, 1961)
- ↑ Leamouth Peninsula Approved (24 May 2007, Skyscraper News) accessed 16 June 2008
